ArchDaily recently spoke to Ben van Berkel, co-founder and principal architect at UNStudio, an international network of specialists in architecture, urban development and infrastructure based in the Netherlands. The office, which was founded in 1988, has completed projects around the world ranging from Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. With over 81 built projects, and 54 currently in progress (including Raffles City in Hangzhou and Scotts Tower in Singapore), London’s Canaletto Tower (which is due to be completed in 2015) marks the practice’s first major project in the UK.
Alongside leading UNStudio’s architectural projects, van Berkel is also Kenzo Tange Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and Professor of Conceptual Design at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main. “I love to teach and get a lot out of it. When you’re so absorbed in practice it’s so important to teach others who have a similar or better talent than you. I believe in the latest architectural strategies and the latest new ideas regarding how we understand new models of working with knowledge, and I learn these mostly from my students!”
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